"Enough chances to win five" states Arnold

After a goalless draw at Bluetongue Stadium coach Graham Arnold insists that his side has nothing to worry about.

The performance from the Central Coast Mariners against Melbourne Victory should have been good enough to ensure the side would take home maximum points however come fulltime the points were shared. With a solid defense and structured attack the one area that the Central Coast side lacked was the final ball.

Grahame Arnold with Alex Wilkinson at last year's season launch

“Tonight we had enough chances to win five matches and there is no way that we can go away from the match angry at our performance.

“We can be happy with the way we moved the ball around, we can be happy with the way we backed each other up in defence and at the end of the day it could have been a much better result on the score board,” said Graham Arnold.

Melbourne Victory was without five of their regular starters although they were still happy with the way the rest of the squad stepped up to the challenge with a team effort to take a point away from home.

The Victory also created several chances in front of goals and could consider themselves unlucky to have not found the net coming off a massive confidence boost from last week’s fixture against Brisbane Roar.

“Coming to this venue without five of our first 11 was always going to be a big ask for the boys but we are happy with the result, it had nothing to do with luck because we created plenty of chances and we got very involved,” said Victory coach Mehmet Durakovic.

Melbourne Victory defender Rodrigo Vargas agreed with his coach, happy with the result.

“A few of the boys who haven’t played in a while came into the side and I think they all did really well.

“After last week we definitely came here with some confidence and there’s no doubt we can take that into next week”.

Arnold continually makes reference to the Mariners chances in front of goal and he knows that his side needs to start converting more of their chances at the other end.

Effective build up and play down both stretches of the field through the likes of Josh Rose and Oliver Bozanic is seeing his side confronting the opposition’s goals as many times as any other side in the league.

“I remember standing in front of you guys last year and saying that our boys need to be more ruthless in front of goals and this was exactly the case tonight.

“You start worrying when you aren’t creating chances, we are creating enough chances but we just can’t finish them, so no one is worried,” said Arnold.

Even though the match finished up 0-0 the around ten thousand punters continued to get behind their side at Bluetongue, a great sign for football on the Central Coast and what’s to come for the Mariners this season.